Working group considers 161 submissions

Angus Dale-Jones says the Code Working group is working through just fewer than 2000 pages of submissions on its initial proposals.

Tuesday, June 12th 2018, 6:00AM

by Susan Edmunds

Its next steps in the process of developing a new code of conduct for the financial advice industry will take place over the next two months.

Submissions closed at the end of April in the group's first formal round of consultation. Dale-Jones said 161 were received.

The group has has one meeting already to discuss those submissions and will hold another on June 20.

"There's quite a lot of material to work through and we want to give it due attention."

But he said, as long as the group was in a position to get its position clear in July, that would be in line with the work of the select committee considering the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill.

"We wouldn't want to to much formal consulting until we had heard what the select committee is doing. These things have to go together."

He said it was too soon to talk about the themes of the submissions received.

But he said there were aspects that carried through many of them.

"There are really useful themes that are developing."

The group would be able to get solid, comprehensive guidance from the process, he said.

It will publish the submissions it has received after MBIE has finished the process of redacting information that submitters have requested is removed.

Dale-Jones said that publication would include some of the group's own thinking with that, and would take a format similar to what the existing code committee used to do with its updates.

He said he had did not have a clear view of how many submissions he had expected before the consultation period began. "What's more gratifying than the number is the range of sources, all sorts have participated."